Okar Research
Email:.....okarresearch@gmail.com
You May Click On Highlighted Terms For Further Research
John Hopkins.....July 15, 2009.......Santa Fe, New Mexico
Click here For Table of Contents
This informal survey of published material explores the teachings outlined in the 1984 publication.... "Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior"... ....
Current research explores the source of the deity Shenlha Okar (Great Lha White Light)......from the ancient Shang Shung, Kailas, Kushan and Avestan regions of pre-Islamic Central Asia/Persia..(Tagzig)..........of particular interest are the Dzogchen style lineages of the Mithraic and Bon traditions of north western Central Asia
D.H. Lawrence @ Lobo Ranch, near Taos, New Mexico.....July 1924.....""To tell the truth I am sick to death of the monotheistic string......It has become monomaniac. I prefer the pagan many gods, and the animistic version. Here at this ranch in Taos, looking west over the desert, one knows that all of our Pale-Faced and Hebraic monotheistic insistence is a dead letter....the soul won't answer any more. Here we have a camp under the hanging stars, and we sit with the Indians around the fire, and they sing till late into the night, and sometimes we dance the Indian thread dance.....".....Lawrence's primary literary effort was to re-sacralize the world, to awaken in his readers their long lost power to recognize the sacred in themselves and in the living environment....."
*******************************************************
The word Magi is a Latinization of the plural of the Greek word magos ......, itself from Old Persian magu...... from the Avestan .....
Kings, Wise Men or Magi ........... The term is a specific occupational title referring to the priestly caste of Zoroastrianism....... As part of their religion, these priests paid particular attention to the stars, and gained an international reputation for astrology, which was at that time a highly regarded science. Their religious practices and use of astrological sciences caused derivatives of the term Magi to be applied to the occult in general and led to the English term magic. Translated in the King James Version as wise men, the same word is given as sorcerer and sorcery when describing "Elymas the sorcerer" in Acts 13:6-11, and Simon Magus, considered a heretic by the early Church, in Acts 8:9-13.
Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "country dweller, rustic")[1] is the blanket term given to describe religions and spiritual practises of pre-Christian Europe, and by extension a term for polytheistic traditions or folk religion worldwide seen from a Western or Christian viewpoint. The term has various different meanings, though, from a Western perspective, it has modern connotations of a faith that has polytheistic, spiritualist, animistic or shamanic practices, such as a folk religion, historical polytheistic or neopagan religion. The term has been defined broadly, to encompass all of the religions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.The group so defined includes most of the Eastern religions, Native American religions and mythologies, as well as non-Abrahamic ethnic religions in general. More narrow definitions will not include any of the world religions and restrict the term to local or rural currents not organized as civil religions. Characteristic of pagan traditions is the absence of proselytism and the presence of a living mythology which explains religious practice. The term "pagan" is a Christian adaptation of the "gentile" of Judaism, and as such has an inherent Abrahamic bias, and pejorative connotations among Western monotheists, comparable to heathen, and infidel, mushrik and kafir ....... in Islam. For this reason, ethnologists avoid the term "paganism," with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as polytheism, shamanism, pantheism, or animism; however others criticise the use of these terms, claiming that these are only aspects that different faiths may share and do not denote the religions themselves. Since the later 20th century, "Pagan" or "Paganism" has become widely used as a self-designation by adherents of Neopaganism. As such, various modern scholars have begun to apply the term to three separate groups of faiths: Historical Polytheism (such as Celtic polytheism and Norse paganism), Folk/ethnic/Indigenous religions (such as Chinese folk religion and African traditional religion), and Neo-paganism (such as Wicca and Germanic Neopaganism).
THE GREAT TIBETAN RIMAY TEACHER JAMGON KONGTRUL (Lodro Taye: 1813-1899)..."One may wonder why this description of the universe does not accord with that of other systems. The Enlightened Ones did not view any aspect of either the environment or the inhabitants of our world system as ultimately real. Therefore, the teachings are not one that, based on a belief in a single view, sets forth a particular system as the only valid one. Instead, they spoke in response to the various levels of capabilities, interests, and dispositions of those to be guided to enlightenment." ...(Jamgon Kongtrul:Myriad Worlds...1995..pg 166).
(Jamgon Mipham Namgyal Gyatso).(1846-1912)..The Tibetan text: "The Lamp that Illuminates the Practice of the Miraculous Juthig of Existence" : interesting and clear descriptions of the DRALA and Werma can be found in two passages from the monumental work on the Juthig divination. The first passage describes the 'Unicorn' Drala Seu Ruchig, one of the most important manifestations among Drala and Werma.Also information on Lha, Nyen, and Lu."
JUNIPER..."Shug pa...the juniper is specified as lha shing, a tree for the lha divinities (often called the lha shing shug pa g.yu lo...'tree of the gods', turquoise leaved juniper) is an antidote against demonic poison and pollution." (Blondeau: 1996..pg 103)...."They possessed a small drum made of juniper, on which they could fly through the air." (Tucci: 1980..pg 228)....(rgya shug:juniper tree)(shugs pa:juniper)..."The juniper tree is the Bon po sacred tree. It is often called the 'lha shing pa gyu lo' (tree of the gods)." (Bansal: 1994..pg 81)..."The priests owned a drum made from Juniper wood on which they could travel through the air like their Siberian counterparts." (Hoffman: 1975..pg 109)...
ASURA RIGDENS....."The Rigdens other than Rigden Raudrachakrin are of the Asura family because of bestowing fear.....Palden Raudrachakrin having a short spear bestows fear in the asura family.... " ........In the Buddhist tradition the Asura Gods are generally referred to as "Jealous Gods".....Trungpa once said that in the Shambhala tradition the Asura are referred to as "Feisty Gods".....
" The linguistic history indicates that the Aryans ("Indo-Europeans"..."Iran"....) originally formed a single people until the beginning of the 2nd millenium BC when the Deva worshipping Indian Aryans and the Asura worshiping Iranian Aryans went separate ways." (Yarshater: 1987..pg 684)... ...
The Kalachakra discusses the expulsion of the Deva worshippers from Shambhala and refers to the Rigden kings as Asura...... "
About 1500 BC, there was a mysterious split between the Deva and Ashura (Ahura) (Ahura Mazda) worshipping Indo-Europeans....The Deva worshipping Indo-European people migrated south-east into India while the Ashura worshipping tribes remained in the ancient Persian regions... These people came from the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian sea. .... The slow migration did not arrive in northern India until about 1500 BC. In India, the Indo-Europeans are usually called the Aryans.Recent genetic evidence supports the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.....In addition to their language, the Aryans brought their gods (Devas) with them to India. These gods form the basis of the Rig Veda and other sagas which were first written down in Sanskrit. They also brought the domesticated horse. The Buddha Gautama was a Prince of the Sakya tribe, one of the prominent Aryan clans in India. Trungpa referred to the "Aryan Traditions" as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism....
"In 726 AD there were a number of Buddhist scholars working in Baghdad who witnessed the anti-Manichaean Shiah sentiment of the Abbasads, they likewise witnessed the Abbasad's friendly attitude toward Nestorian Christianity."
Shambhala .... "Iranian origins"......the mostly extinct Avestan Iranian tradtions of pre-Buddhist/pre-Islamic Persian Central Asia of which the Tibetan Bon, Zorastrian, and MANICHAEISM are quite interesting.......
"Appreciation" of the DRALAS
of Western Europe and North America.....Who are these Gods...these Dralas...MITHRA... the Greek and Roman warrior gods...the Avestan Asura......their rituals and ceremonies....their costumes and uniforms........where do they abide....their power spots.....their sacred dances...the songs of the Asuri .....
Click here For "The Grounding of Johnny Blue"
"Trungpa Rinpoche incorporated other elements into Shambhala Buddhism that he thought would be beneficial to practitioners. From the Bön religion, the lhasang ceremony is performed; other elements of shamanism play a role. From Confucianism comes a framework of heaven, earth, and man for understanding the proper relationship between different elements of compositions of all kinds. From Taoism comes the use of feng shui and other incorporations. From the Shinto tradition comes the use of kami shrines to honor natural forces in specific locales."..Wikipedia
Shiva (in Tibetan, Lha Chen) also plays an important role; in fact his god-realm is called Shambhala.
JAPAN....Buddhist and Shinto separation......"After the Meiji Imperial Restoration of 1868, the new government purged Shinto of Buddhist elements, or ordered to clearly segregate Buddhism from Shinto...........The radicals who overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate in the Meiji Restoration of 1868 took Fukko Shinto as their ideology, and this became the new government's state creed. Shinto and Buddhism were separated by decree in 1868: Buddhist effigies were ordered to be removed from Shinto shrines and all traces of Buddhism were purged from the imperial household.
Non-Visible Beings........Drala or Dralha?...... Drala is actually a transliteration for two different Tibetan terms. Therefore it stands for two slightly different kinds of deity. One is spelled sgra bla, and the other is spelled in Tibetan, dgra lha. The first one with the element, sgra refers to a kind of energy; it is a vibrational entity. The second (dgra-) word ends in the syllable lha, and it is a kind of god.....Jamgon Kongtrul the Great used a third spelling .....
Drala spelt sGra bla begins with the syllable sgra which means sound, and continues with la that here means "a type of individual energy that is endowed with protective functions" (Norbu 1995.) For example, seng- ge'i sgra means the lion's roar. It is also possible to write and hence, refer to sgra'i lha since sGra means a sound or cry, but using lha here instead of la conveys the meaning of a sound deity.
Ancient relationships ... the ancient Bon Kingdom of Shang Shung which was located at the base of Mt Kailas, the dwelling place of Shenlha Okar and the 360 WERMA Deities.....the Avestan/Aryan traditions of pre-Islamic Iranian Central Asia and their influence the secret ..MITHRAIC.. Lodge ceremonies of Pre-Christian Western Europe.... and the ceremonial rituals and dances of Sotuknang, of the Hopi Tradition, whose face is brilliant like a bright star and whose body is the nature of crystal.....
Tibetan Manichaeism........"In A.D. 1000 the Great Persian/Tajik historian Al-Beruni wrote: "The majority of the inhabitants of Tibet have converted to the religion of MANI , The Buddha of Light"....
"Just to the west of the Bon Kingdom of Zhang-zhung there once existed the vast Kushana empire ....... an area in which Indian Buddhism and the Bon teachings interacted with various strands of the ..MITHRAIC..t, MANICHAEISM , as well as Indian Shaivism and Nestorian Christianity.......
The Hopi Sky God and the similarity to the description of the Tibetan Sky God......"In one legend the flying shield is associated with Sotuknang, the Hopi sky god. A devastating flood had destroyed Palatkwapi—“the red city to the south,” possibly located in the red rock country near Sedona, Arizona. Shortly afterwards a boy named Tiwahongva and his sister Tawiayisnima, who were forgotten in the chaos and left behind by their fleeing parents, set out on a journey to find them. In the evening they decided to make camp. They were just opening their bundle for dinner when they heard a great roar overhead. The children were very frightened, wondering what this strange thing could be. The brother held his sister tightly to his breast as a fantastic being descended from the heavens. He was wearing a costume that glittered like ice (silver?) while his head and face shone like a star. He spoke: “Do not be afraid. My name is Sotuknang. Because of my sympathy for your plight, I have come to help you. Get on my paatuwvota and let us be on our way.”
He then took them on his flying shield up into the sky so that they could see for many miles around. Feeding the hungry children ripe melons, he told them that they must have faith in him and in his teachings that would later arrive through their dreams. Finally he landed a short distance from the village in which their mother and father had settled, bid the young ones farewell, and flew up again into the clouds. Forever grateful to the sky god, the brother and sister walked into the village to be reunited with their parents."
NAVAJO WINDHORSE......The story goes, that the Johano-ai' starts each day from his Hogan in the east and rides across the skies to his Hogan in the west, carrying the shining golden disk, the Sun. They say that when the skies are blue and the weather is fair, Johano-ai' is mounted on his Turquoise Horse or his White Shell Horse; but when the heavens are dark with storm, he is riding the Horse of Coal.
When a horse of the Sun God gallops, he raises not dust but glittering grains of mineral, such that are used in our ceremonies. And that when he rolls and shakes himself, it is this shining mineral that flies from him.
The White Shelled Horse of the east is the color of purity and of the spirit. They say that Sun God rode this horse when he was courting Changing Woman, the earth goddess. The white horse occupies the east, the color of dawn or early morning light.
In the Shambhala tradition .. Shiwa Okar is the origin of the teachings and the essence of primordial reality.......In the Tibetan Bonpo tradtion, Shenlha Okar is the source of the Dzogchen lineages of Bon......According to Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "Shiwa Okar and the Shenlha Okar are the same deity..."
This research explores ancient relationships...Shiwa Okar, 16 year old white deity wearing crystal armor and helmet.....Shenlha Okar, the brilliant white pure light being with body the essence of crystal "God of Gods" of the Tibetan Bon tradition.........MITHRA.., the pure white pre-Christian Europe/pre-Islam Persia, mounted Warrior Sky God whom the soldiers of ancient Roman worshipped in numerous Mithraeum of Western Europe.......and Sotunanga, the 'crystal ice faced' supreme god "Heart of the Sky" deity in the Hopi tradition...in 1974 Trungpa said that the pre-Buddhist Bonpo religion of Tibet was 'identical' with the Native American tradtions of the Southwest........
There was an effort in Japan to separate Shinto from Buddhism: "After the Meiji Imperial Restoration of 1868, the new government purged Shinto of Buddhist elements, or ordered to clearly segregate Buddhism from Shinto."
Shenlha Okar...... published practices, invocations and ceremonies in Tibetan/Shangshung Shamanism, Tantra and Dzogchen...... (Lha of Lha, God of Gods, Great God White Light...the peaceful "Shiwa'i" deity who is the "source of the teachings of the traditions of Dzogchen)...and the THE NINE DEITIES WHO CREATED THE WORLD
Shenlha Okar ("Great Lha White Light") ....is pure white...In the Bon tradition his ontological status is that of a bonku, 'unconditioned being' or 'supreme being', corresponding to the Buddhist category of dharmakaya...His association with light suggests Manichaean influences....The colour of his body is like the essence of crystal...his ornaments, attire, and palace are adorned by crystal light...".......
........."Shenlha Okar, the Bon deity who is the source of the lineage of teachings of the Dzogchen (rDzogs chen), the Great Perfection, in the lands of Lha, Nyen, and Lu". ....Kungtu Zangpo gave the teachings to Shenlha Okar who passed them to Shenrab Miwo who taught them in Zhang Zhung............From the white pure light arises the deity Shenlha Okar at the center of the mandala".........from a book by Lama Tenzin Wangyal
Click here for Notes on similarity of the KIVA of New Mexico and the MITHRAEUM of Europe
Click here for Notes on SHENLHA OKAR and Five Elements Shamanism
Click here for Notes on SHENLHA OKAR and the transformative practices of Tantra
The Japanese yearn for the arrival of Miroku Bantsu or Rigden Japo. The Altai of Asia call him the White Burkhan and Oirot ("Messenger"). Hindus expect the advent of the Kalki Avatar and Maitreya. He is called the Saoshyant by the Zoroastrans. Tibetans expect the advent of Gessar to save them
Click here for Notes on SHENLHA OKAR as the source of the Five Dzogchen Lineages
"In 1959, Chogyam Trungpa left Tibet, fleeing the invasion of the Chinese communists. It took him a long time to cross the Himalayas. On the way, he wrote a synthesis of the spiritual history of Shambala that was, unfortunately, lost during that eventful journey, then re-written in England........it describes Shiwa Okar and the Nine Lha who created existence out of non-existence.............In the Bon tradition the legend is known as Shen Lha Okar and the Nine Brothers who created this world.......
Click here to view the new Werma Thangka by Greg Smith
Click here to view the Shiwa Okar Thangka by Cynthia Moku
Click here For Notes on The Nine Lha
" Jamgon Kongtrul the Great, one of the leading scholars of the nineteenth century who broke with Tibetan sectarian confinement and forged a deep understanding of rival philosophies in the Rimay Tradition........ With great courage, this brilliant practice/scholar compiled the basic teachings of all Tibetan Schools in his encyclopaedic work "The Five Great Treasures".
"The most significant Bon teacher in the Rimay movement.........Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (1859-1935)..."HEART DROPS OF DHARMAKAYA.....Dzogchen Practice of the Bon Tradition".
"In many indigenous traditions, we relate with the raw elements. Fire Pujas, Earth Ceremonies, rituals near springs, Sky and Space rituals.....Basically we are relating with the raw elements and their related spirit realms.....If you do not have a reference place when we talk about spirits, do a little dzogchen practive and feel spacious......Inviting the four guests......The shrine is basically the house of the enlightened first guest....such as Shen Lha Okar.,.....not really for the 2nd (Gods) , 3rd (Karmic Guests), or 4th (Guests of Compassion) Guests......
MANICHAEISM .........According to Mani the First-Man now emanates sons as a man who puts on his armor for the combat. These five sons are the five elements opposed to the five aeons of darkness: Clear Air, Refreshing Wind, Bright Light, Life-Giving Waters, and Warming Fire. He put on first the aerial breeze, then threw over himself light as a flaming mantle, and over this light a covering of water; he surrounded himself with gusts of wind, took light as his lance and shield, and cast himself downward toward the line of danger.
The Shambhala Diet & the Manichaen Diet ........
Chogyam Trungpa...."NYIDA: The vegetarian diet of Shambhala. Nyi stands for yellow and green foods, primarily vegetables and fruits, and da for white foods such as milk, yogurt, cheese and tofu...."
One of the main principles of the ancient Silk Route Manichaeans was a vegetarian diet of mainly white, green and yellow foods. Supposedly, light was concentrated in these foods......
MANI....Mani is not a personal name but an honorific term such as Rinpoche, or Roshi......his family was from Ecbatana, Persia....a city of interest in the origin of the Shambhala legend..........His father's name was Fâtâk Bâbâk, a citizen of Ecbatana, the ancient Median capital ...... The boy was born A.D. 215-216
ECBATANA.(Hamadan)..(48E..35N)..."Ecbatana, a great circular city in ancient Persia.... Strong walls one within the other, seven in all and within the final circle on a hill was the royal palace (kal'ah, kala, kala.pa?). The highest and innermost wall was lined with gold. The next outer wall was lined with silver. The next wall was painted orange. The next blue. The next red. The next black. And the outermost and lowest wall was painted white. The king in the inner circle was seen by no one and all business was transacted by messengers." (Grene: "Herodotus History"..1987..pg 81)...Ecbatana was destroyed during the Moslem invasion of Sham in the 7th Century.... ......
SHIWA OKAR is the main Shambhala deity...the "Lha of Lha".. "God of Gods"......(Shiwa'i Od'kar....Peaceful White Light)
SHENLHA OKAR In the Bon tradition........"The body of the Bon Deity....
Click here for Notes on Shiwa Okar and Shenlha Okar
"RIMAY TRADITION.... (Rime, Ris med) : "Jamgon Kongtrul The Great....(1813-1899) His background was Bonpo (his father was an illustrous lama of the Khyungpo, or Garuda clan..[Kongtrul: 1995..pg 15]) and both he and Jamyang Kyentse were particularly open to the Bon tradition. The most significant Bon teacher in the Rimay movement was Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (1859-1935)..."HEART DROPS OF DHARMAKAYA.....Dzogchen Practice of the Bon Tradition". [Samuel:1993..p.542]....
"Until the eighth century, the country of Zhang-zhung had been an independent kingdom with its own language and culture. It lay in what is now Western and Northern Tibet and the center of the country was dominated by the majestic presence of the sacred mountain of Mount Kailas........ Just to the west of Zhang-zhung there once existed the vast Kushana empire..... an area in which Indian Buddhism interacted with various strands of Iranian religion-- Zoroastrian, Zurvanist, Mithraist, Manichean, as well as Indian Shaivism and Nestorian Christianity. ...... All this suggests that certain trends within Bon actually do go back to a kind of syncretistic Indo-Iranian Buddhism that once flourished in the independent kingdom of Zhang-zhung before it was forcibly incorporated into the expanding Tibetan empire in the eighth century. This "Buddhism", known as gyer in the Zhang-zhung language and as bon in the Tibetan, was not particularly monastic........"
"We are working with iconography as a journey, rather than as entertainment or excitement or cultural fascination. We are talking about personal experience, how we actually see this world. There is a basic iconographic pattern in the universe, like the existence of the seasons and the elements, but how we react to that is individual.""....(Trungpa: Dharma Art.:1996...pg 94)
BASIC GOODNESS....."Küntu Zangpo is one of the peacful Bonpo deities, his name means "The All-Good" and he is seen as the supreme deity of all knowledge and has strong links to Shenla Okar in the sense that both are hierophanies of the bönku or "The body of Bon", the ultimate Truth..... Küntu Zangpo is Künzang Akor which means "The All-Good cycle of A", "A" being the last letter in the Zhan Zhung-alphabet ....the White A......Important Dzogchen Practice in the Bonpo Tradition"
"Texts that we commonly call the Shambhala teachings stem from the visions that the Druk Sakyong, the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, had from an early age in Tibet......These visions came from the Rigden and from Shiwa Okar......the Vidyadhara often said that he was merely writing them down...." Sakyong Mipham......Public Letter....January 23, 2005
Click here for notes on Sol Invictus, Shiwa Okar, Mithra, and The Great Eastern Sun
Click here Notes on various Ancient Tibetan Lineages of Dzogchen
Click here for notes on Kalachakra and Islam
Click here
Tibetan Uighur Manicheans, Bon, and the Shambhala Connection.....Shenrab, ..MITHRA.., and Mani
Click here For Thangka of the Bon Peaceful Deity - Shiwa'i Lhatsog
The Following Published texts Have been essential:
Chogyam Trungpa..."Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior"...1984........ outline and summary of Secular Terma teachings from 1979-1984....
Campell, Leroy A......"Mithraic Iconography and Ideology"....Leiden:1968......Persian and Avestan Language sources........Amazing description of how ancient languages actually began to approach reality.....
Norbu, Namkhai "Drung, Deu, and Bon: Narrations, Symbolic languages, and the Bon traditions in ancient Tibet"... 1995.......rare descriptions of the Drala and Werma deities... translation of important Bon Texts...
"Those who have been fearless in their search and fearless in their proclamation belong to the lineage of master warriors,
whatever their religion, philosophy, or creed...They are the fathers and mothers of Shambhala." (Trungpa: 1984..pg 179)